Thursday, October 27, 2005

An exercise in stupidity

So we're off to Phoenix for a Vampire LARP convention. As we will be flying in, we need to take everything with us. Stock, sales equipment, racks, leatherwork, personal clothes etc etc. Our first headache was figuring out racks. Because stock takes up so much room, we have used up our luggage allotment with 2 huge suitcases, a medium size case and a large duffle IN ADDITION TO out two carry ons. This is just to carry a basic slection of corsets etc. But what the hell are we gonna put stock on? The answer came in the form of last years Las Vegas Fantasy Fetish Ball where we faced the same problem. Rossana thought we just took a large rack. Actually we did not. But I spent a good hour designing a portable rack before remembering that I bought 2 portable racks for just such an situation last year at this time. Problem solved, all is well...or is it?

A call to America West tells us that out bags can be no heavier than 50 lbs each. Anything over and we get raped for $50 per bag. Do you know what corsets weight? So this morning was spent carefully adjusting all the luggage. Jettisoning anything that wasn't crucial (my toiletries now consist of a tissue and a toothpick). But lacking an accurate way to measure the weight of the bags we had to drive into Oberlin to borrow the scale at the UPS store.

"But Steve, if you have a houshold scale you could have easily gotten an accurate weight by first weighing yourself and then weighing yourself with the bag, and then subtracking your weight."